[3.5] Occultist Cold DoT Caster (Cold Snap + Vortex) WIP

Because of Spiritual Aid:

Wiki:

Spiritual Aid grants increased damage, accuracy and global accuracy for minions. Player is also affect by Increases and Reductions to Minion Damage

And the minion nodes give quite a bit unspecified damage increase.

Ah so when you get spiritual aid, any +minion damage also goes to you. Thanks.

Lvl 84, beat uber lab yesterday for the first time on my own. Planning on upgrading amulet to Halcyon as soon as I can affford it (2,5 Ex atm). Boots will get upgraded to windshriek as soon as I get to tier 8 maps.

Any tips on gem used? Running with Arctic Armor and apply curses via Armageddon Brand.

P.S.: We need a frost brand skill

An honest question here: If we're looking at using Orb of Storms in the ring to proc EE, would it perhaps be easier to run a Lightning Golem instead? Would still get the EE procs, gets some attack and cast speed (if you're needing that) and frees up a button press.

Same could be done with a Flame Golem if you could squeeze in enough STR to make it worth it, and then for just flat damage upgrades.

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SilvanOrion wrote:

An honest question here: If we're looking at using Orb of Storms in the ring to proc EE, would it perhaps be easier to run a Lightning Golem instead? Would still get the EE procs, gets some attack and cast speed (if you're needing that) and frees up a button press.

Same could be done with a Flame Golem if you could squeeze in enough STR to make it worth it, and then for just flat damage upgrades.

Golem does not save us a button press, you will resummon it constantly which for me is very annoying. Also OoS procs Ele Overload very easily.

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Bekador wrote:

Lvl 84, beat uber lab yesterday for the first time on my own. Planning on upgrading amulet to Halcyon as soon as I can affford it (2,5 Ex atm). Boots will get upgraded to windshriek as soon as I get to tier 8 maps.

Any tips on gem used? Running with Arctic Armor and apply curses via Armageddon Brand.

P.S.: We need a frost brand skill

Tbh, Taryn's Shiver is not very good for this build. We do not hit hard enough to freeze anything other then white mobs (not to mention the fact that I'm using Ele focus in my build) so we do not get the additional damage on frozen enemies. And you can get a much better rare staves with Cold Damage over Time Multiplier which will give you incredible damage boost.

Also - why do people try to get so many uniques in their builds?) We got so many amazing crafting options with the new Master system and you just rob yourselves from it.

And no Frost bomb? No arcane surge? You are losing quite a bit of damage that way.

You have 3 curses in your build - enfeeble and temp chains on brand and despair on flask, do you have +1 curse in the tree or did you take ascendancy nodes on +1 curse? Cause you have 1 base and +1 from boots, its not enough to apply all 3.

First time playing self cast, usually I am going Duelist.After the dissapointing from the Impale skills I tried something completly different. So all the curse stuff, Energ shield etc. is new to me. Using Uniques because they are cheap and somewhat reliable. I thougth about crafting a good staff/armor later when there are more white 6 links around.

Thanks for pointing out my missing curse ability, will skill into third curse.

Frost Bomb totally escaped me, running out of buttons with brand, vortex, vaal discipline/cold snap etc.

Regarding freeze: I do hear the distinctive "pop" sounds from shattering quite often, tooltip from Vortex says 36 % chance to freeze and 15 % crit chance..

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Bekador wrote:

First time playing self cast, usually I am going Duelist.After the dissapointing from the Impale skills I tried something completly different. So all the curse stuff, Energ shield etc. is new to me. Using Uniques because they are cheap and somewhat reliable. I thougth about crafting a good staff/armor later when there are more white 6 links around.

Thanks for pointing out my missing curse ability, will skill into third curse.

Frost Bomb totally escaped me, running out of buttons with brand, vortex, vaal discipline/cold snap etc.

Regarding freeze: I do hear the distinctive "pop" sounds from shattering quite often, tooltip from Vortex says 36 % chance to freeze and 15 % crit chance..

You have to pass the freeze % roll AND hit hard enough for a freeze to occur. This build will not freeze anything of value, it is all DOT damage and very little hit damage. The ascendancy will freeze but ultimately not worst it.

Are you the one who did the YT preview on this build? I recognize the tree with the minion damage quirk and no one else I saw was doing that. I thought that was clever but hadn't gone that route with mine.

I don't have much end game experience but this is how my PoB looks so far:
https://pastebin.com/rbqLR1Tg

I originally started the build as AB/VCS but AB clear was awful so I swapped in vortex instead and the clear speed has been crazy since.

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fate0521 wrote:

Are you the one who did the YT preview on this build? I recognize the tree with the minion damage quirk and no one else I saw was doing that. I thought that was clever but hadn't gone that route with mine.

I don't have much end game experience but this is how my PoB looks so far:
https://pastebin.com/rbqLR1Tg

I originally started the build as AB/VCS but AB clear was awful so I swapped in vortex instead and the clear speed has been crazy since.

Nop, not a youtuber. Trick with minion nodes was introduced in Delve when they made the Spiritual Aid node, nothing new or special about it.